I Am Burdened With Glorious Purpose – Day 5 Challenge Painting

This month is 30 Days 30 Paintings. A challenge I’ve done before and loved every minute of. Painting with accountability and purpose is incredibly motivating for me and ends up pulling me in new directions.

What the hell is up with that? I don’t usually paint in monocolours. I love colour. Bright and bold. Attention grabbing. Emotional. But this style has grabbed me tight and I’m in love. It takes me waaay back to my teen years of endless pencil drawings. Learning how to capture likenesses.

But these are no drawings. And this is no ordinary villain. Loki. The Trickster.

If he’s smiling, you should be running.

Working on black again, I started quickly with the light to mid-light tones. Again with the white and unbleached titanium.

The mid-tones went on and the painting fell flat. This is normal, because we need a range of shades to see depth. At this point, the darks were completely missing. But this painting came together fast. I think this was around the 40-minute mark. Fucking fast.

And then it was time to add in some depth. I figured this would be the fasted portrait I’d ever done. He looks good, right? RIGHT? Of course, right.

But details make all the difference and I spent at least an hour or so on those alone. Knocking darks back. Edging shapes. Adding blue to the background. Refining the eyes. A crap ton of fiddling around the mouth. The slightest touch can make all the difference to a painting.

And I spent some time trying to decide if it was done. That’s the hardest part in some paintings: when to stop. Stop too soon and the piece is okay. Wait too long and the piece is overworked and loses that *something*. It’s a freaking knife edge sometimes.

Want to see my work in person? I’ll be in Kitchener for Tri Con on January 16th and 17th. Check out my events page for more details!

Plus, follow along as I paint my way through this month. 30 Days 30 Paintings is a fun challenge which can yield some surprising results. I’m currently painting my way through my backlog of pieces I had planned over the last couple of years. And some new ones. Follow along here and on Facebookwhere I paint live nearly every night.